


l'espirit de l'escalier

by jfk



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Memories, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-07-02
Updated: 2011-07-02
Packaged: 2017-10-20 23:26:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/218250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jfk/pseuds/jfk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock remembers John, above all things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	l'espirit de l'escalier

John never could remember anything. He was always forgetting his keys, or his phone, or his plans. People said, it was a wonder he'd gone in to medicine, but John never forgot anything from class. What he learned would save lives, would make a difference, and what he was taught he would always remember.

 

It's a terrible thing to forget, John thinks. People, experiences, feelings. They define us as human beings, they define every inch of us. And to forget is to loose parts of oneself.

 

At twenty-two, John has finished university for the summer, and has come to home to a world he once knew. It's full of memories and nostalgia and sentiment and déjà vu. Places and things that haunt, rather than participate, in the modern world. The residents of home have not changed, in an almost spectral way, and John finds congratulations from teachers he loathed, girls he fancied, people whom he half-recalls. The summer will be long, and for lack of activity, John finds work.

 

Nothing special, nothing away from home. Volunteer work, for nobody will hire an adolescent with no medical school qualifications, and they certainly wont pay him. It's sound, though, and it's interesting. John can feel proud to walk home weary, knowing that decisions made can change lives, better or worse. The experiences will serve him when John becomes a doctor. They will be memories by then, and he must never forget.

 

John keeps on smiling, that's the trouble. He has not yet been broken because he has seen nought of horror, and of the world. John will forget the peace, for the all do. He'll remember the heartache when it comes. He'll remember the tragedy.

 

He remembers meeting Sherlock Holmes. The boy who forgot.

 

July 18th is a Tuesday, and a dark-headed boy is brought to John's supervisor late into the evening. This boy (for that's what he is, at the awkward age between adolescence and manhood) does not stir: he doesn't even rouse once that night. The tragedy is, by all accounts, the injury he sustains. Head trauma. John thinks, it's not so bad. It could be much worse, like leukaemia, or cirrhosis.

The sadness is what he finds when the boy wakes.

 

-

 

 

Wednesday, he rises for the first time, in the pale of the morning. He's a strange looking thing, and he's even strange when he talks. John is the first to hear him speak.

 

He frowns for the longest time, deep lines drawing themselves onto the volume of his face, before he says: “Who am I?” With the queerest, uneasiest look to him. It's a terrible thing to forget, John thinks.

 

“Your name is Sherlock Holmes,” He says, carefully, so as not to deepen the lines on the boy's face. “You were brought in last night, I think. Some kind of-”

 

“Head trauma, obviously,” Sherlock says, and John wont pretend he doesn't find it a little curt. “You're not a doctor.” The eyes trace him over once, and then twice. “Not even a nurse; so why are you-” He makes a face, between delight and suspicion. “A volunteer, yes,” Something must be very wrong. John goes to speak, but he's cut off. “Too young, clearly,”

Tired of being talked down to by a boy younger than himself, John interjects with conviction. “But you didn't even remember who you are.” He even tries to sound remorseful, but it doesn't serve him well.

 

“Oh, don't be like that,” Sherlock says, waving a hand. “It's not important,”

 

The next time he wakes, he asks John again. It's nearly heartbreaking. He knows John by name, but he has forgotten his own.

-

 

“Do you remember anything?” John asks him, the next day. He's doing a routine check, and it falls from his mouth like breath. He can't help but want to find out.

 

Sherlock looks at him, really looks at him, all the way through to John's soul, that shifts under the scrutiny. He prompts Sherlock out of nerves.

 

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Sherlock's eyes are as blue as mercy when he looks at John again, and practically hands them to him. That's just it: Sherlock can't remember much at all, as if he's blind.

 

“Not really my area,” Nonchalantly, he looks away, chest swollen with bravado and pride. John doesn't know what he's really feeling, but can guess. The answer is simple enough, but John isn't finished yet.

 

“Oh, right then,” John says, because he is honestly surprised. Perhaps it's not his place to say, but Sherlock is a pretty little creature, even if he's strange and rude. “...do you have a boyfriend?” His voice is a fraction of it's previous height, and Sherlock turns on him eyes accusing, halfway between defensive and offended. “Which is fine, by the way,” Adds John, to take the sting out of it, if there were any.

 

“I know it's fine,” Sherlock snaps. He's building a fence between them: a wall. He doesn't want to let John in. Therefore, he'll have to assume.

 

“So you've got a boyfriend then?”

 

“No.”

 

“Fine, okay,” The tension is like a hot fist intent on reaching out and choking him. Sherlock still has that look, like he's angry. But is the fury at John, or at his inability to remember? It's unclear. He feels the need to bridge the gap, somehow. “You're unattached, just like me,” That would explain the lack of company on both counts. John hopes that Sherlock will look away, stop looking so enraged with the world. But he does not. The glare intensifies.

 

For a second, Sherlock looks away. He thinks about the words that crawl up from his throat. It's so human, John barely recognises Sherlock from it.

 

“John, uhm-” He looks down, and then back at John. “I think you should know that I consider myself married to my work, and while I'm flattered by your interests-” What kind of work would a boy like Sherlock have? And what interests did he think John had. It was volunteer work. Sherlock was just another patient. Yes, his tale was perhaps more morose but John doesn't think of him...look at him in that light.

 

“No, no.” John interrupts, embarrassed. “I'm not asking-no.” He's convincing the both of them, in reality. “I'm just saying –it's all fine,” When really, John doesn't know what he's saying. Sherlock's eyes have softened. He's trying to understand, and the blue isn't clouded by logic, or science.

 

“Thank you,” Sherlock says, like a whisper, before turning away.

 

It's the only gratitude he ever shows John, anyway.

 

-

 

Hours later, Sherlock's mistake is made clear.

 

A dark-haired man is rushing through the hospital corridors, and John is just about done for the evening, one last visit to Sherlock Holmes, when the gentleman bursts in, flustered, still in a police uniform.

 

“They wouldn't tell me where you were,” He goes to Sherlock, all the longing and fondness in the world in his eyes. But Sherlock does not mirror him. “You just ran off and then you were, gone –I didn't know if you were alright,” He wraps himself around Sherlock, breathing him in, as if Sherlock will evaporate at any minute, and he wants to collect the vapour, preserve the boy that is.

 

Sherlock stares at John, mute and helpless.

 

“Sherlock, you're-” But Sherlock doesn't think when he speaks this time.

 

“I don't know who you are,” Blunt as brick, and yet sharp as a switchblade. “Sorry,” What makes matters worse is the way Sherlock says 'sorry'. Unfeeling, with no regret. As if it's a petty crime, and not the loss of a lover, or a sibling.

 

John takes the reins. He pulls the man aside and tried to explain.

 

“Head trauma can affect long and shirt-term memory and balance,” John says, heart in the back of his throat. The man frowns at him. “He forgets who he is sometimes, I wouldn't take it too personally.” He shakes his head.

 

“You don't understand, I'm his –we're very intimate, alright? He wouldn't just forget...Sherlock never-”

 

“I understand how difficult this must be for you, but putting him under pressure wont help him remember any quicker than-” John is silenced by a whimper, that's slight and it comes from the man.

 

“But, he's my-...he's my boyfriend.” He whispers it to himself, and to John. But not to Sherlock, who remains sat up in the hospital bed (he can't stand very well, balance problems). “Lestrade. Geoff. I work at the station-house. You ask for cases-”

 

Sherlock nods. “I remember them.” Lestrade falters.

 

“But not me?”

 

“Sorry,” He says again, and it still means nothing. There is no recognition in Sherlock's eyes, blue as mercy and distant as winter. Lestrade does not say anything else. He looks at Sherlock, and finds nothing.

 

Sherlock doesn't say much after that.


End file.
